The Matrix Reconstituted Part 3 (The "re" thing is getting old already)


Neo sat alone with a beer in the corner of a pub, thinking that perhaps he should have specified which sunglasses he wanted Smith to buy for him.

"Maybe I should have specified which sunglasses I wanted Agent Smith to buy for me."

He then began to wonder exactly why Smith was going to buy sunglasses for him.

"Why the hell is Agent Smith going to buy sunglasses for me? Hey this is good beer..."

He thought nothing of how utterly ridiculous his life seemed to be. Suddenly he realised something:

"This isn't the original Chapter Three!"

A strange heavenly voice called to him from nowhere:
"The first Chapter Three sucked, OK?"

"And this one doesn't?" Neo raised an eyebrow.

Agent Smith suddenly appeared at the window.

"Mr. Anderson, you should know by now that only agents are allowed to raise their eyebrows in such a manner."

Neo apologised and went back to his drink. He watched a blond kid asking the barman about a guy called Ted.

* * *


Trinity was staring fixedly at Ted. She had thought that she knew Neo well, but she must have been wrong.

"How could he have changed so much in such a short space of time?" She thought to herself. She was sad that the Neo she knew was gone.

Ted noticed Trinity staring fixedly at him.

"Excellent!" he thought to himself.

Morpheus noticed them staring fixedly at each other.

"Nothing new here, then," he thought to himself.

He began to wonder exactly why they were still in the phone booth. He had not noticed that the phone booth next to them had been ringing. Ted saw Morpheus' look of confusion and shuffled over to the telephone. He dialled a number and the phone booth suddenly moved. Morpheus saw that they were travelling through a network of wires.

"Is this how they power the matrix?"

Suddenly Ted spoke:
"Shouldn't we have waited for Bill?"

Trinity continued to stare at him.

"What? Who is Bill?" she asked.

"Oh, Bill's a friend of mine," Ted answered.

"Is he unplugged?" Morpheus was even more confused. He had never heard of anyone called Bill who had been unplugged, and Neo could not possibly mean anyone who had not been woken up.

"Dude, I think something is most heinously wrong with your mind."

Morpheus glared at Ted. He was feeling very uneasy and he did not need this from Neo, even if he was The One. Morpheus was uneasy because he was never the one who got confused, that was supposed to be Neo's job. He began to wonder if this really was Neo when the phone booth stopped with an alarming jolt and a huge dust cloud enveloped them all.

* * *


Tank sat at the computer playing Solitaire. He occasionally looked to see what had happened to Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity but went back to his game without registering what was going on.

"I wonder what happened to everybody...?" he thought.

He realised that they probably would not come back for a while so he left the room and turned on some very loud music. The sentinels heard him and joined the party. Even Neo heard the music from inside the matrix but he took no notice.

* * *


"Ted?"
The blond kid had noticed Neo sitting in the corner of the pub. Neo tried to ignore him.

"Ted! Dude! Have you been in here all this time?" Bill smiled and sat down at Neo's table.

"Look, kid, I don't know who you are but I do know that I am not Ted." Neo began to walk over to the bar to order another beer.

"Ted, what is wrong with you? How many beers have you had?" Bill raised an eyebrow.

Agent Smith walked past the window again and shook his head irritably.

"Don't do that," Neo warned. "You don't wanna see Agent Smith when he's mad. He might not get my sunglasses."

"Ted, I think you might be drunk. Can I borrow some money?" Bill tried to make the most of the situation.

"If you stop calling me Ted I might buy you a beer." At least in the matrix it wasn't real money.

"Excellent, Ted...I mean...uh...what should I call you then?"

"My name is Neo." He walked up to the bar and bought two more beers.

"OK, T...Neo, we have to go and collect historical figures for our history report tomorrow..."

Neo suddenly interrupted:
"How many beers did you see me drink?"

"This is the second one, dude." Bill stared at Neo.

"But you came in after I did so I could have had more, right?"

"Uh...I guess so, yeah." He continued to stare at Neo.

"OK. So I might not be having this conversation with you. Maybe I'm just completely drunk." Neo was wondering if he should go with this kid. If it was just his imagination, what harm could it possibly do?

"Why the hell do I have to think such shit?" Neo was angry with the author for turning him into an idiot. She promised that he could do something heroic later in the story. He was satisfied.

"OK, um...Neo, lets go! Uh...why am I calling you Neo?"

"It used to be my hacker alias."

"You have a computer?" Bill felt that he had been deceived.

"Yes, I had a computer. Most people do..." Neo stopped and thought. Most people didn't really have computers, they were all in the matrix. Even he had never really had a computer.

"Actually, no, I didn't." He thought he ought to be honest. Bill was beginning to think that his friend was either extremely drunk, or going insane.

"OK, lets go..." They finished their beers and left; Neo was reluctant but the author insisted.

As they were walking, Neo began to think about what had happened in the past few hours.

"Could this story get any more ridiculous? I want to see my lawyer..." He almost stopped when the author offered to cut out his approaching heroic deed, but he was unsure as to her sincerity. He wanted a contract. She threatened to kill him off. He stopped thinking.